Milei makes case for capitalism at Davos

Javier Milei Tells World Leaders: 'The State Is Not the Solution' | Reason | Katarina Hall: 

January 18, 2024 - "Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei praised the virtues of free markets and warned political leaders about the dangers of collectivism in a speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. 'The West is in danger, it is in danger because those who are supposed to defend Western values find themselves co-opted by a worldview that — inexorably — leads to socialism, consequently to poverty," Milei said in the opening of his keynote speech in Davos, Switzerland, during his first overseas trip as president.

"Milei explained that no other country is a better example of this trend than Argentina. Once a global economic powerhouse, Argentina has spiraled into poverty as a consequence of extensive state intervention in the economy. Two out of every five Argentines live in poverty and the inflation rate is over 200 percent.

"In his 23-minute address, Milei argued that the key to eradicating poverty worldwide lies in adopting free market ideals and capitalism. 'Far from being the cause of our problems, free enterprise capitalism, as an economic system, is the only tool we have to end hunger, poverty, and indigence,' he continued. 'The empirical evidence is unquestionable'....

"The libertarian president emphasized that market failure can only happen if there is coercion by the state, 'which has a monopoly on violence.' He criticized the collectivist approach of dismissing freedom and opting for more regulation to fix a country, which generates 'a downward spiral of regulations until we are all poorer'.... 

"Since his inauguration on December 10, the anarcho-capitalist president has implemented measures to counteract Argentina's history of collectivist policies, including a substantial devaluation of the peso and a reduction of government ministries. In December, Milei presented several other reform bills to Argentina's Congress, which aim to drastically cut state spending and deregulate several economic sectors. Milei's proposals are currently being discussed by Congress, but his party lacks the majority in both houses of Congress. The proposals also face staunch opposition from labor unions and other protesters.... 

"'We come here today to invite the other countries of the West to return to the path of prosperity,' Milei told his audience. 'Economic freedom, limited government, and unrestricted respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. This phenomenon of impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy. Nor fatalism. It is a reality that we Argentines know very well.'|

"'"Do not give in to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself," Milei declared."

Read more: https://reason.com/2024/01/18/javier-milei-tells-world-leaders-the-state-is-not-the-solution/

Special address by Javier Milei, President of Argentina | Davos 2024 | World Economic Forum | January 17, 2024 (Event begins at 4:00; Milei's speech begins at 6:00)

Is the free market just a Big Myth?

Is the free market just a myth dreamed up and propagandized by big business and libertarian economists?

The Big Myth Is Full of Recycled Anti-Capitalist Cheap Shots | Reason - Phillip W. Magness:

February 25, 2023 - "New academic 'histories' now appear on a near-monthly basis, each blaming a variety of social ills on the conspiratorial machinations around a single idea: the free market. Almost everything in this genre follows the same formula. When the American electorate fails to embrace the political priorities of an Ivy League humanities department, these disheartened authors cast about for a blameworthy culprit. They settle on 'market fundamentalism' or 'neoliberalism.' The explanation then takes a paranoid turn, declaring the targeted theories a 'manufactured myth' arising from the 'inventions' of 20th century business interests.... All eventually settle on a mundane conspiracy of business interests and libertarian economists, who allegedly derailed America from its progressive path by convincing people that markets work better than government at solving problems.

"At some 550 pages, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us To Loathe Government and Love the Free Market is among the most loquacious entrants into this crowded literature. Harvard University's Naomi Oreskes and California Institute of Technology historian Erik Conway lay out their conspiracy theory with formulaic precision, but their book is atypical in one significant way. While most of the other works in the anti-neoliberalism genre manage at least to excavate some interesting archival findings about libertarian economists (before badly misinterpreting them), this book is remarkably light on original content.... A reader ... will be left wondering why this same story needed yet another repackaged recitation....

"The Big Myth is structured in sequential vignettes about various themes and figures such as Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Friedrich Hayek, Rose Wilder Lane, and Milton Friedman, all of whom are portrayed as either willing propagandists for big business or hapless dupes of the same. The authors expend almost no effort on understanding the arguments of the thinkers they set out to debunk.

"A revealing example appears in the book's treatment of Leonard Read's 1958 essay "I, Pencil." Read's story is a fairly straightforward allegory for Adam Smith's famous concept of the "invisible hand," showing how complex social coordination arises from routine economic exchanges and signals in the absence of a centralized design. To Oreskes and Conway, however, the metaphor is literally the hand of God working from above to ensure the market system provides. As they put it, 'God made the marketplace and the marketplace made the pencil; ergo God made the pencil'....

"Interpretive peculiarities continue in their treatment of Ludwig von Mises' Socialism. After initially acknowledging that the book was written in German in 1922, Oreskes and Conway soon drift into anachronism by insinuating that it was intended as a critique of President Franklin Roosevelt. ("Mises's use of the term socialism was misleading," they contend, "because no credible American political leader in 1944 was advocating central planning.") They augment this ascription of prophecy with a sleight of hand, replacing the revolutionary Marxists of Mises' original commentaries with the comparatively benign Norman Thomas as their own preferred avatar of socialism. Like other texts in the anti-neoliberalism genre, The Big Myth removes 20th century free market authors from their historical context by hand-waving the Soviet Union out of existence and proceeding as if socialism means nothing more than a narrow swath of modern Scandinavian social democracies.

"Such errors are frequently paired with another recurring theme: the authors' fundamental inability to approach their opponents with anything remotely resembling intellectual charity. The book is filled with gratuitous swipes, many of them comically ahistorical. This usually means either a false accusation of racism or a disparaging attack on a target's qualifications. Mises receives both types of abuse. After dubbing him an 'absolutist who sympathized with fascism,' Oreskes and Conway launch into an extended attack on the Austrian economist's migration to the United States in 1940. In their telling, Mises ... struggled to find a respectable academic job until 'dark money' funders created a succession of positions for him at New York University..... Meanwhile, Mises' academic work in the United States gained higher honors than either Oreskes or Conway has ever achieved.... 

"They casually brand Milton Friedman a 'racist extremist' and defender of segregation, but not for any actual defense of segregation. The authors simply disagree with his argument that markets were more effective tools for bringing about integration than government edicts.....

"They accuse Friedrich Hayek of eschewing 'the essence of scholarship,' which 'is to look past the immediacies of time and place,' while themselves constantly processing history through their modern partisan commitments. They accuse free market economists of venturing outside their scientific expertise while offering their own decidedly nonexpert opinions on everything from economic inequality to COVID-19.

"The authors' discussion of the latter subject, which closes the book, is unintentionally comedic. Oreskes and Conway use the pandemic to contrast U.S. 'market failure' with the alleged success of 'countries that mounted a strong, coordinated response,' China foremost among them. As their book went to press, China's centralized 'zero-COVID' regime was collapsing into the same unfettered disease spread that Oreskes and Conway ascribe to free markets. But readers should not expect any self-interrogation from this pair."

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/02/25/the-big-myth-is-full-of-recycled-anti-capitalist-cheap-shots/

Obamas' new Netflix series is stupid propaganda

Netflix Teams Up With the Obamas To Produce Big Government Propaganda | Reason - John Stossel:

October 19, 2022 - "The latest Obama documentary series is The G Word. "G" for government. As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid. It's big government propaganda.

"Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, 'It's actually easy'.... But that's just silly. It's so complex that millions of us pay to get help.

"Obama's series is hosted by silly comedian Adam Conover. Conover, correctly, calls himself 'an idiot.' He uses his time with the former president of the United States to make lame jokes and, at one point, to make sandwiches. He compliments Obama on how well he cuts the bread. It's not funny.

"The series occasionally covers some serious issues — meat inspection, for example. But instead of honest reporting, actors do a skit suggesting that, without government, meat companies would sell us dead poisoned rats. 'Food regulation was unbelievably successful,' concludes Conover. But food is largely safe today mostly because slaughterhouses cleaned themselves up way beyond what government requires.... One company executive showed me how they voluntarily do extra things like treat beef carcasses 'with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum.' Also, 'equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab-tested.'

"By contrast, for 90 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected meat with a crude process called "poke and sniff." Inspectors stuck spikes into carcasses and smelled them. They kept using the same spikes, so they sometimes spread disease. The government only stopped poke and sniff in the 1990s.

"A few times, Obama's series admits that government agencies mess things up. Conover mocks the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 'not a name you normally hear after the words "did a great job."' No, but he then claims FEMA fails because it's underfunded.... That's ridiculous. FEMA doesn't fail because it lacks resources. U.S. disaster relief funds have increased by billions. FEMA fails because it's a government bureaucracy, and bureaucracies do wasteful things, like bring bottles of water to hurricane victims but then leave them at an airport. 

"The private sector is more efficient. The G Word sneers at what it calls 'this philosophy that the free market should be trusted over the government.' But Walmart donates supplies much more efficiently than FEMA. They employ sophisticated weather tracking that helps them determine what assets are needed where. They get things to people because they lose money if they don't.

"Obama's series smears those of us who are skeptical of government handouts. 'In the wake of the civil rights movement,' claims Conover, 'some Americans began to resent the fact that the government was now providing assistance to black and brown citizens.' What? We didn't resent welfare because we're racists. We objected because it created a new permanent underclass. Handouts, President Ronald Reagan explained correctly, 'discourage work'....

"Obama's documentary depicts Reagan as a vicious surgeon cutting valuable government agencies, throwing them into a bucket labeled 'free market.' But government wasn't cut under Reagan. Federal spending went up during his terms. It always goes up.... It only grows. Today it's bigger than ever.

"That's fine, says Conover, because Washington rescued us during the COVID shutdowns with 'stimulus checks, small business loans, and corporate tax breaks!' They don't mention how much of that money was stolen or that their spending orgy brought 8 percent inflation.

"For three hours, Obama and his sidekick say government should do more. Whatever the problem, their answer is always more government and more money. Maybe someday a president will point out that government has no money of its own and that spending more than you have is a road to ruin."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/10/19/netflix-teams-up-with-the-obamas-to-produce-big-government-propaganda/

How is social order possible?

On Hayek’s “Kinds of Order in Society,” Part I | American Institute for Economic Research - Donald J. Boudreaux: 

December 6, 2021 - "F.A. Hayek wrote several books and articles that are justly famous.... But because Hayek’s professional life spanned more than 60 years – from the mid-1920s until the late 1980s – the corpus of his work is enormous, with most of it being relatively obscure.... But my very favorite of Hayek’s many superb but lesser-known works is his paper that first appeared in the Winter 1964 issue of New Individualist Review: “Kinds of Order in Society.” This paper is a work of genius. A great deal of confusion about society, and about government’s role in it would be swept away were this paper’s core message more widely understood....

"Among the assumptions at the foundation of this article is that we human beings extend our ability to achieve our goals by cooperating with each other. And the greater is the number of individuals with whom we cooperate, the greater is the number of goals that we can successfully pursue. This fact explains the omnipresence of human cooperation. Such cooperation began eons ago in small hunting and gathering bands in which each individual personally knew those with whom he or she cooperated. Today, this cooperation literally spans the globe and occurs among billions of people, nearly all of whom are strangers to each other.

"When the cooperation is only among individuals who know each other personally – that is, only among a very small number of persons – it’s easy for each person to comprehend the nature of the cooperative arrangement.... But cooperation on such a small scale doesn’t allow individuals to achieve as much as each can achieve by including in the cooperative effort more individuals. The inclusion of more individuals brings to the cooperative effort not only additional muscle power but, far more importantly, additional and more diverse brain power – that is, more human creativity. The inclusion of more individuals also encourages greater specialization, which in turn results in each task being done more expertly, more uniformly, and faster.

"The human mind, however, isn’t evolved to be able to know more than a few hundred individuals. If we cooperated only with individuals we know, the span of our cooperation would remain extremely narrow.... Fortunately, our inability to personally know more than a handful of fellow human beings is offset by our instinct to adopt and follow rules. By following rules we can, and do, increase the number of individuals with whom we cooperate beyond the number that we personally know.

Source: Utopia, You Are Standing in It!

"An example is trade, which has at its base this rule: Each person is entitled only to what other people voluntarily give to him or her. No one gets to take other people’s stuff without their permission. Under this rule, if Jones wants some item, say an axe, owned by Smith, Jones understands that he can get this axe only by persuading Smith to give it to him. And especially if Smith is a stranger to Jones, the most obvious way for Jones to persuade Smith to give him the axe is for Jones to agree to give some other item ... to Smith in exchange.... Trade allows each of us to tap into the unique talents, interests, and endowments of our trading partners, be they neighbors across the street or strangers across the ocean. And trade is possible because its most basic rule is easily understood by every human being regardless of cultural background.

"Trade is not the only activity made possible by our rule-following instincts. Without sophisticated rule-following behavior, life in groups larger than the small band would be impossible. Think of yourself in a big city. You know not to practice playing your trumpet or your drums at midnight, and you know that other people follow a similar rule, which enables you – and others – to rely on being able to sleep each night. You know that when you come with your filled grocery cart upon a queue at the supermarket checkout lane, you take your place at the back of that line – and you’re content to do so because you know that other people will follow the same rule. You know that you aren’t allowed, without invitation, to enter premises belonging to other people. You know what green lights and red lights mean to motorists. You know that even though the restaurant serves you food before you pay for it, that you must pay for it when you’re done dining.

"Because humans are rule-following creatures, you thrive amongst strangers. By following the rules that prevail in a society, not only are harmful and disruptive encounters kept to a minimum, each individual – by knowing that countless strangers will follow the same rules that he or she follows – is able to plan courses of action in ways that would be impossible if rules didn’t exist.

"Our rule-following behavior gives rise to ever-more complex – and ever-more productive – patterns of cooperative interaction. These patterns are not only not designed by anyone, they could not possibly be so designed. Furthermore, these patterns cannot be directly observed and understood in the same way that our hunting and gathering ancestors could directly observe and ‘fully’ understand their simple cooperative endeavors. And yet, because we today still have the same brains as did our hunting and gathering ancestors, we are unable, without real intellectual effort, to perceive – and much less to make sense of – the complex patterns of social cooperation in which each of us participates daily.

"In “Kinds of Order in Society,” Hayek identified two categorically different kinds of orders – 'spontaneous orders' and 'organizations' – that are both common and useful to humans. Each of us is part of both kinds of orders. Yet we instinctively suppose that only one kind of these orders – namely, organizations – is possible. As I’ll explain in my next column, our instinct of interpreting all order as being the consequence of conscious organization is the root of much mischief."

Read more: https://www.aier.org/article/on-hayeks-kinds-of-order-in-society-part-i/

Also read: On Hayek’s “Kinds of Order in Society,” Part II

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The two kinds of social order

On Hayek’s “Kinds of Order in Society,” Part II | American Institute for Economic Research - Donald J. Boudreaux:

December 15, 2021 - "I concluded my previous column by blaming much policy mischief on the human instinct (perhaps a better word is 'habit') of interpreting all social order – including economic order – as being the consequence of conscious organization. This conclusion reflects the fact that my worldview is influenced so heavily by the work of F.A. Hayek, not least his relatively obscure 1964 New Individualist Review article, 'Kinds of Order in Society.' In this remarkable essay, Hayek identified two kinds of social orders, 'organizations' and 'spontaneous orders.' [stress added]. These orders differ from each other categorically.

"Organizations are consciously designed arrangements of human beings, each with an assigned task or set of tasks. Each organization is meant by its designer, or designers, to achieve a particular goal. An example is a hunting party arranged and carried out by our hunting-and-gathering ancestors. Another example of an organization, one familiar to us today, is a restaurant.... The crucial fact is that the restaurant, like the prehistoric hunting party, is consciously organized to pursue a particular goal in a particular manner.... And so the actions of every person in an organization can and will be judged by how well those actions contribute to the achievement of the organization’s goals.... 

"Spontaneous orders, like organizations, are highly useful to individuals. But unlike organizations, spontaneous orders are not designed and created. They emerge as unintended consequences of the actions of persons, each of whom is pursuing his or her own individual goals with no awareness that those actions will give rise to a larger order. While a spontaneous order assists each individual in the pursuit of his or her goals, such an order, unlike an organization, itself has no goal towards which it aims. And because a spontaneous order as such has no goals, the actions of the individuals whose choices give rise to the spontaneous order cannot be judged by how well or poorly they promote the goal of the spontaneous order – for, again, the spontaneous order has no goals.

"The most obvious example of a useful spontaneous order is language. Language is clearly (to use a phrase much-favored by Hayek) the result of human action but not of human design. Languages emerged from human beings attempting to communicate with each other. Yet no one consciously decided what specific words and sounds refer to, or mean, in any language.... Being undesigned, it follows that language was not designed to serve any purpose or to achieve some particular goal.... And yet language does indeed enable each of us as individuals to better pursue our own goals. The shopper uses language to explain to the store clerk just what items he wishes to buy, and the store clerk, at the end of her work day, uses language to inform the cab driver of her destination. But the shopper and the store clerk, by using the same language, are not together acting to achieve some higher goal. Further, it would be mistaken to describe language as having among its goals the service of the shopper and of the store clerk.

"Another example of a spontaneous order is the global market. No one designed today’s division of labor – with some of us working as plumbers, others of us as web designers, yet others of us as butchers, brewers, bakers, or baseball players. And no one designed the indescribably complex pattern of exchange relationships that enable each of us to enjoy the fabulous prosperity that each of us enjoys. And yet these phenomena are real. They are the result of human action but not of human design. The market, like language, provides enormous assistance to each of us as we each pursue our own individual goals. But the market, also like language, has no overarching goal toward which it aims.

Source: Ryan Miller blog

"The human mind, alas, is much less comfortable with spontaneous order than with organization. Individuals interacting with each other in ways that no one planned seems, to many people, to be obviously inferior to individuals interacting with each other according to a plan. Just look at successful corporations; they’re planned to fulfill a particular goal. Likewise, when a government is in a desperate shooting war against other governments, it takes control of the economy and directs it according to a plan designed to defeat the dreaded enemy. Surely – the reasoning goes – the economy would produce much better results if it, too, were always run according to a plan rather than left to drift aimlessly with no intended direction.

"Since the publication in 1776 of Adam Smith’s Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, economists have made a compelling case that the material results of competitive market processes will be far superior to those produced by government interventions designed to bring about particular, concrete outcomes. But although Hayek agreed with this conclusion, in his criticisms of government planning he often emphasized a different point – namely, that insofar as economic arrangements are planned by government, each individual is conscripted to serve ends that are not of his or her choosing.

"A beautiful feature of spontaneous orders is that they maximize the scope of each individual to choose – and to pursue with much hope of success – his or her own unique goals without having to agree with the goals chosen by others or to have to sacrifice his or her goals to the goals of other people. Also, in a spontaneous order no individual is thwarted in the pursuit of his or her goals simply because these goals are inconsistent with some overarching plan.

"We humans often use homeowners’ associations, firms, and other organizations to improve our prospects of achieving particular goals. But the undeniable usefulness of organizations in certain circumstances should not be mistaken as evidence that organizations are superior to spontaneous orders. Each of these two kinds of order in society has its proper place. And just as it would be foolish to expect, say, a business firm that produces automobiles to emerge spontaneously without someone intending to create such a firm and plan its operation, it is foolish to expect that the economy as a whole can be successfully planned and operated as if it were a business firm or a military unit.

"There are, to repeat, two kinds of order in society. It’s time we stopped glorifying and overestimating one, and ignoring the reality, or discounting the marvels, of the other." 

Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He writes a blog called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Boudreaux earned a PhD in economics from Auburn University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.

Read more: https://www.aier.org/article/on-hayeks-kinds-of-order-in-society-part-ii/

Also read: On Hayek’s “Kinds of Order in Society,” Part I

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The conspiracy theory of free enterprise

 Free Enterprise as Conspiracy | American Institute of Economic Research - Phillip W. Magness:

 August 25, 2021 - "The recent surge of academic interest in 20th century conservatism, libertarianism, and associated developments in free-market economic thought also carries with it a curious historiographical implication. Encompassing contributions by authors such as Kim Phillips-Fein, Quinn Slobodian, Bethany Moreton, Kevin Kruse, and Nancy MacLean, the genre varies widely in scholarly quality. Its contributors nonetheless share a pronounced ideological hostility to their subject matter, which in turn shapes how they select and construe their source materials.... 

"The approach taken in these works essentially conspiracizes ... routine historical records from disliked conservative, libertarian, or free-market sources as if they were evidence of a collective will to politically transform the mechanism of history in ways that disrupt a specific course of progressive political development desired by the author. A predictable assortment of problematic consequences in the present allegedly follows from the decades-long designs they claim to have identified: the 2007-2008 financial crisis, environmental degradation, rising inequality, the political ascendance of the religious right, and Trump.

"Lawrence Glickman’s Free Enterprise: An American History offers the latest contribution to this booming yet peculiar subfield. Styled as an intellectual history of the concept, his thesis holds that 'free enterprise' is essentially a constructed mythology that arose from political opposition to the New Deal. Over the course of the 20th century, this version of 'free enterprise' recast economic interventionism as an aberration from an artificially constructed history of the pre-Roosevelt American economy.... In his telling, the myth’s expositors — mostly a group of business interests and associated free-market intellectuals — set out to morally 'delegitimize' the New Deal order and with it 'the most basic functions of government,' namely taxation, regulation, and public expenditures....

"In Glickman’s telling, that attack amounted to a 'one-sided war' upon the New Deal by business interests and other defenders of 'free enterprise,' all rooted in the aforementioned myth-making. While he offers a moderately interesting etymology of the phrase ... dating back to the nineteenth century, the core of his myth-making narrative suffers deeply from the epistemic distortions of the book’s ideological hostility to its subject. In particular, Glickman’s own political commitments to the New Deal (and progressivism more broadly) effectively render him unable to even fathom the existence of valid economic criticisms for Roosevelt’s policies, or their long-term effects on the United States’ fiscal picture to the present day. Rather, the New Deal is simply 'an outgrowth of democratic processes' and unassailable as such. Its critics, past and present, are ,,, casually brushed aside as expositors of a near-religious devotion to the artificially constructed 'free enterprise' concept. This rhetorical move allows the author to sidestep any engagement with salient criticisms of New Deal policies and political actors. It’s much easier to recast the critics as fanatics under the 'talismanic' trance of a dismissed concept.

"Glickman accordingly bristles at the suggestion that the New Deal unintentionally “prolonged and deepened rather than ameliorated the Depression,” even as modern empirical scholarship has lent strong support to that exact contention.... He discounts any concern with the deficit-inducing budget strains of Social Security and similar programs on account of their popularity.... He similarly sees only fear-mongering over the specters of European communism and fascism in contemporary business complaints about Roosevelt’s affinity for economic central planning.... One need not speculate that the early New Dealers drew inspiration from Europe’s totalitarian regimes in the decade before the world descended into war with those very same powers. They openly boasted of doing so themselves....

"An unfortunate result is an ostensible history of 'free enterprise' that almost completely omits the concept’s historical use as a philosophical foil to the Soviet Union and central planning. In fact, Glickman consciously excludes this dimension from his study at the outset by little more than a wave of the hand: 'Although what we might call "the age of free enterprise" … coincided almost precisely with the Cold War battle against Soviet communism, proponents described the dire threats to the system as primarily domestic, not foreign.' The severity of the error in this assessment may be readily ascertained by looking no further than mainstream mid-century political discourse. 

"As Dwight Eisenhower contended in a celebrated 1950 speech that helped to propel him into the presidency, the communist world had 'embarked upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government… because regimentation cannot face the peaceful competition of free enterprise.' Or consider Harry Truman’s 1953 State of the Union Address, recounting that the Soviets had predicted an American reversion into the Great Depression after the end of World War II: 'We answered that question—answered it with a resounding "no".... Free enterprise has flourished as never fore.' John F. Kennedy’s never-delivered Trade Mart Address from the day of his assassination planned to contrast the military ambitions of international communism with 'the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system.' Or as Lyndon Johnson succinctly put it in a 1964 interview, 'we have one thing [the Soviets] don’t have, and that is our system of private enterprise, free enterprise.' By attempting to pigeonhole the term to its domestic political uses, Glickman has somewhat astonishingly managed to completely miss its central place in mid-twentieth century geopolitics."

Read more: https://www.aier.org/article/free-enterprise-as-conspiracy/

Walter E. Williams (1936-2020)

 'I Just Do My Own Thing': Walter Williams, RIP | Reason - Nick Gillespie:

December 2, 2020 - "I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. A popular syndicated columnist whose work appeared in over a hundred newspapers on a weekly basis, he was a long-time contributor to Reason and served as an emeritus trustee of Reason Foundation....

"Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Williams grew up as a neighbor to Bill Cosby in the city's racially segregated housing projects and was drafted into the peacetime Army during the Cold War. A self-described 'crazy-ass man who insisted on talking about liberty in America' long before he was a public intellectual, the racist violence and abuse he suffered at the hands of police, military officers, and other authorities informed much of his work. In his powerful, evocative 2010 memoir, Up From the Projects, he recounts the time when, as a cab driver in the City of Brotherly Love, he was ordered out of his cab by a white officer, beaten up, and then charged with disorderly conduct."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/12/02/i-just-do-my-own-thing-walter-williams-rip/

Walter Williams, RIP | Cato@Liberty - David Boaz:

"After early stints as a cab driver, a soldier in Korea, and a probation officer, Walter focused on education and got a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1972. From 1973 to 1980 he taught at Temple University in Philadelphia before moving to George Mason University for the rest of his career.

"In 1982 he published a book of original research and provocative ideas, The State Against Blacks, which Don Boudreaux describes in today’s Wall Street Journal as 'an eloquent, data‐​rich broadside against occupational licensing, taxicab regulations, labor‐​union privileges and other fine‐​sounding government measures that inflict disproportionate harm on blacks by restricting the employment options and by driving up the costs of goods and services'. His work in these areas and his outgoing, engaging, effective style of communications brought him broader public attention. He appeared in Milton Friedman’s PBS series “Free to Choose” in 1980. He became a frequent guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show.... 

"In 1989 the Cato Institute and Praeger published Walter’s book South Africa’s War against Capitalism. In it he showed, with detailed economic and historical analysis, that ... 'South Africa’s apartheid is not the corollary of free‐​market or capitalist forces. Apartheid is the result of anticapitalistic or socialistic efforts to subvert the operation of market (capitalistic) forces.'"

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/walter-williams-rip

In Memoriam: Walter E. Williams, 1936-2020 | Forbes - Art Carden: 

December 3, 2020 - "Williams’s work and commentary was informed by a deep understanding of how free people in free markets find ways to help one another. Howard Baetjer explains the 'Invisible Hand Principle' in his short book Economics and Free Markets. He quotes Williams, who said 'In a free market, you get more for yourself by serving your fellow man. You don’t have to care about him! Just serve him.'

"We get, as Adam Smith explained, what we want by helping other people get what they want. Importantly, this requires us to respect their right to say 'no.' Free markets rest on a profound respect for others’ dignity. A free market is possible and productive when we recognize that other people are not merely means to our ends, created to serve us or created to live as we want them to. If we want to secure their cooperation, we have to give them what they want rather than what we think is best for them. Few people understood this better than Walter Williams."

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2020/12/03/in-memoriam-walter-e-williams-1936-2020/?sh=5fbe44b18fe4

Farmers turn to market to fix supply-chain damage

Pennsylvania Dairy Farmer Decides to Bottle His Own Milk Rather than Dump It. Sells Out in Hours | Return to Now - Sara Burrows:
May 4, 2020 - "When Ben Brown’s dairy processor told him they could no longer buy his milk, he got to work bottling it himself.

"Brown’s Whoa Nellie Dairy farm has been providing high-quality, cream-line milk since the 1700s. He sells some of it at his on-site farm store, but a large portion of it used to be sold to a dairy processor who pasteurized and bottled it for local restaurants and markets.

"When he realized he would have to dump hundreds of gallons of milk each week until his 70 milking cows dried up, ... he got to work, literally around the clock, pasteurizing it in small batches in his 30-gallon vat and bottling it up. He posted on Facebook that they’d open up the farm store for additional hours to sell the milk directly to consumers, and the response was overwhelming:

"The line to get in the store was at least 20 customers deep for several hours, the local news reported.... They sold out within hours and have sold out almost every day since. On days they don’t sell out, they donate their fresh, non-homogenized milk to local charities."
Read more: https://returntonow.net/2020/05/04/pennsylvania-dairy-farmer-decides-to-bottle-his-own-milk-rather-than-dump-it-sells-out-in-hours/

Florida Farmers are Selling Directly to Consumers to Avoid Produce Dumps | Return to Now - Sara Burrows:
May 1, 2020 - "Last month, Florida farmers let countless tons of produce rot in their fields after the restaurants, theme parks and cruise lines they normally serve this time of year were suddenly closed due to nationwide quarantines. This month, they are changing their business model, selling directly to the consumers who are doing a whole lot more home-cooking these days....

"Florida farmers are getting help from the state department of agriculture, which has created a website to connect them to local buyers. Floridians can search the website for farms and co-ops near them and a list of what each farm offers.

"While some farms grow primarily mono-crops – such as tomatoes for ketchup – some are bio-diverse, organic farms with a wide variety of specialty produce that used to be sold in high-end local restaurants.... Some farms are even offering milkshakes, poultry, seafood and shell fish."
Read more: https://returntonow.net/2020/05/01/florida-farmers-sell-directly-to-consumers-to-avoid-produce-dumps/

Huawei sues over U.S. ban on its products

Huawei sues US over government ban on its products | World news | The Guardian - Lily Kuo:

March 7, 2019 - ""Huawei is suing the US over a government ban on its products.... In a statement on Thursday, the Chinese telecoms equipment and smartphone manufacturer said it had filed a lawsuit in the US district court in Plano, Texas, home to the company’s US headquarters, calling for the ban on US government agencies buying Huawei equipment or services to be overturned.

"'This ban not only is unlawful, but also restricts Huawei from engaging in fair competition, ultimately harming US consumers. We look forward to the court’s verdict, and trust that it will benefit both Huawei and the American people,' said Guo Ping, Huawei’s chairman.

"The ban, a provision of the National Defence Authorisation Act signed by Donald Trump in August, also prevents government agencies using third-party contractors who use Huawei products. Huawei alleges it amounts to a 'bill of attainder', a legislative act forbidden under the US constitution in which an individual or group is declared guilty of a crime without trial."
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/huawei-sues-us-over-government-ban-on-its-products

Huawei is Defending Libertarian Economic Principles in The Heart of America - Eurasia Future - Adam Garrie:

March 7, 2019 - "While it may be well over a year before the ... verdict ... Huawei has already won in the court of common sense. The US Constitution guarantees one’s basic freedom to engage in commerce without facing arbitrary governmental restrictions and burdensome regulations. These basic principles which are fundamental to the US Constitution, tend to be classed as economic libertarianism.

"Libertarianism can be defined as a political philosophy that stresses the necessity of little to no governmental interference in the lives of individuals and the businesses they operate. As such, there is a particular emphasis on free markets, free trade and freedom of choice for entrepreneurs, business owners and consumers, within the libertarian political philosophy....

"Although the US Constitution specifically enshrines these values into law, ... American politicians in both major parties ... often argue for less economic liberty, less freedom of choice and for more creativity stifling regulation.... Ron Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul continue to fly the flag of libertarian principles [but] for the rest of America’s political and media class, big government regulation is very much the rule ... both in respect of Donald Trump’s opposition to free trade and ... Democrats who argue for monstrously bloated (to the point of being ridiculous) initiatives such as the so-called 'green new deal'....

"[T]he Huawei lawsuit ought to open up the hearts and minds of average Americans who have allowed themselves to be bamboozled by fear.... Huawei is defending the liberty of ordinary Americans, more so than most American politicians."

Read more: https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/03/07/huawei-is-defending-libertarian-economic-principles-in-the-heart-of-america/

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The Scotsman who discovered spontaneous order

Adam Ferguson and the Spontaneous Order of Society - Foundation for Economic Education - Richard M. Ebeling:

November 26, 2016 - "One of the most cherished misunderstandings, if not delusions, of the social engineer – the individual who would presume to attempt to remake society through conscious and planned design – is the confident belief that he (and those like him) can ever know enough to successfully remold mankind and human institutions. An appreciation of how limited is our individual knowledge and abilities to ... make a 'better world' through government regulation, control and central planning has been slow in fully developing ... [but] was a central hallmark of several of the members of the Scottish Enlightenment.

"A leading figure in this Scottish movement was Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), who for several years held a chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.... Ferguson is best known for his 1767 work, An Essay on the History of Civil Society ... [which] contains some of the clearest analyses of social institutions and their emergence and evolution as the spontaneous development of the interactions of multitudes of people over many generations, the results of which are unpredictable, yet often superior to any attempt to actually guide or direct social processes through time.

"Ferguson believed that the origin and nature of man in society had to be derived from historical investigation.... [M]an may be a willing, volitional and acting individual, but he is born into society in the form of families and clans, which then took on more complex and extended forms of human relationship and association over extended time. The formal institutions of society concerning rights and law emerged out of this more primitive human order precisely to delineate private property ownership and impose restraints on abusive political authority.

"Thus, Ferguson argued, society was not created by design to provide safety and security, but, instead, freedom and rights emerged and evolved out of more primitive forms of tribal and collective association as responses to considered injustices and abusive power....

“Like the winds, that come we know not whence, and blow whithersoever they list, the forms of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin; they arise long before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not from the speculations of man.... Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what is termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments [institutions], which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design....

"Ferguson was insistent that however much we may now see and appreciate the logic and the benefits that have arisen through the evolution of society’s institutions to protect rights, secure property, enforce justice, and maintain the peace that fosters the environment that makes liberty and prosperity possible, the multitudes of human actions and interactions that brought this about were done by individuals giving no thought to how their specific goal-oriented activities would generate the complex order of modern society....

"Ronald Hamowy, an expert on Adam Ferguson who wrote his dissertation on Ferguson and his conception of spontaneous order under the supervision of F.A. Hayek  ... emphasized that Ferguson’s greatest concerns with commercial society came not from the development of the market order, itself, but from the intruding and intervening hand of government into the competitive system....

'In matters of particular profession, industry, and trade,’ wrote Ferguson, ‘the experienced practitioner is the master . . . When the refined politician would lend an active hand, he only multiples interruptions and grounds of complaint’....

"[T]o try to impose ... centrally engineered designs on society limits its potentials and possibilities to what a handful of finite and limited human minds can anticipate and imagine. Far better for all to have the individual liberty, and to respect the freedom of others, to use their knowledge as they see fit in the pursuit of their own personal happiness, so all may reap the benefits that come from the interactions of multitudes of minds the full outcomes of which that no one can successfully comprehend."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/adam-ferguson-and-the-spontaneous-order-of-society/

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Free markets and the spirit of giving

Richmond County Daily Journal | Free markets and the spirit of giving - Robert Higgs:

December 20, 2016 - "Christmas will soon be here, and preparations for this holiday are proceeding apace.... Notice how much effort and expense are going into giving to and bringing joy to others. Notice, too, how much of the spending people do during this season would be impossible except for the affluence made possible by the remaining elements of the market society that the government, to date, has failed to destroy completely.

"The free-market society is often criticized or condemned root and branch for its alleged dependence on the unsavory human trait of greed ... but self-interest is quite different from greed and indeed often consists of the very opposite. People in general have an interest in, for example, earning more income, and a major reason for this desire is that they wish to have the wherewithal to give to or take care of others more effectively — their own families first of all in most cases, but hardly their own families exclusively....

"The amounts of money, time, and effort that people devote to making others happier or better off — amounts vividly on display during the holiday season — belie the slander of a free market’s dependence on greed. But such transfers also occur throughout the year and amount to an enormous proportion of all the uses to which people in free-market societies put their wealth.

"In contrast, the alleged compassion and caring for the unfortunate that many have supposed support socialism are scarcely to be seen.... [S]ocialism does not so much eliminate the greed that exists in a population as it alters the forms in which the greed can be directed and expressed.... Leaders of socialist societies have a habit of living lavishly amid the squalor of the system they control and despoil — Mao, Castro, and Chavez provide ready examples. Ordinary people in socialist societies, being deprived of free-market outlets for the pursuit of their self-interest must instead strive to better themselves and those for whom they care by struggling for political power....

"So, at this time of the year, let us remind ourselves not only of the love and compassion that Christmas calls forth, but also of the systemic economic underpinnings that permit people to express their love and compassion so effectively. The love of family, friends, and others is the greatest blessing, but the opportunity to live in a free-market society — even one as hogtied as ours — is also a great blessing."

Read more: https://yourdailyjournal.com/opinion/columns/57390/free-markets-and-the-spirit-of-giving
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Latin Americans embracing economic freedom

The Libertarian Moment Is Unfolding in Latin America, Not the US - Nelson Albino, Jr., Pan Am Post:

April 4, 2016 - "Over the last few years, the so-called libertarian moment has been given much to talk in the United States — especially after the rise of former Congressman Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 elections. His message reached the masses and generated great expectations ... but Donald Trump changed everything.... Trump’s arrival did so much damage to the Republican libertarian movement that Reason Magazine and Cato Institute held a series of debates on whether the libertarian moment was 'dead.'

"Regardless of its downfall or not in the United States, it is certainly alive and well in Latin America.... Latin Americans have grown tired of years of populism and socialism and have begun to demand changes in their respective countries.

"Argentina is the best example right now. The victory of Mauricio Macri in last year’s presidential elections ends years of leftist government.... The new president wasted no time and immediately started implementing pro-market measures, reducing taxes, eliminating currency controls, naming a new president for the Central Bank and negotiating foreign debt payments....

"Last December and for the first time in 17 years, on the election with higher voter turnout, Venezuelans chose an opposition-controlled National Assembly, removing the Socialist Party control of the legislative branch.... The Chavistas still control the executive and judicial branches, but this year Venezuelan opposition will activate constitutional mechanisms to exit President Maduro, ending 17 years of socialist tyranny....

"Millions of angry Brazilians have taken to the streets in recent months demanding the resignation of President Dilma Rousseff.... Brazil’s main topic is the scandal at the state oil company Petrobras, which involves President Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Both Rousseff and Lula da Silva are part of the socialist bloc that has ruled in South America for the past decade-and-a-half.

"Another example is Bolivia, where President Evo Morales, who has spent 10 years running the country, ... was defeated in a referendum where the Bolivian people did not approve of Morales running for a fourth presidential term, forcing him to end his mandate as soon as it expires in 2020.

"Though reforms are still at an early stage, the fact that pro-market ideas and economic liberalism are starting to be seen as real, strong crisis alternatives, both economically and socially, is a big step — especially when historically solvent countries like the United States continue to debate whether they should tilt to the left."

Read more: https://panampost.com/nelson-albino/2016/04/04/libertarian-moment-latin-america-us/
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How to fight terrorism with capitalism

The Capitalist Cure for Terrorism - Wall Street Journal - Hernando de Soto:

October 10, 2014 - "As the U.S. moves into a new theater of the war on terror, it will miss its best chance to beat back Islamic State and other radical groups in the Middle East if it doesn’t deploy a crucial but little-used weapon: an aggressive agenda for economic empowerment.... [T]he West must learn a simple lesson: Economic hope is the only way to win the battle for the constituencies on which terrorist groups feed."

"I know something about this. A generation ago, much of Latin America was in turmoil. By 1990, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization called Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, had seized control of most of my home country, Peru, where I served as the president’s principal adviser. Fashionable opinion held that the people rebelling were the impoverished or underemployed wage slaves of Latin America, that capitalism couldn’t work outside the West and that Latin cultures didn’t really understand market economics.

"The conventional wisdom proved to be wrong, however. Reforms in Peru gave indigenous entrepreneurs and farmers control over their assets and a new, more accessible legal framework in which to run businesses, make contracts and borrow—spurring an unprecedented rise in living standards....

"Peru reduced by 75% the red tape blocking access to economic activity, provided ombudsmen and mechanisms for filing complaints against government agencies and recognized the property rights of the majority. One legislative package alone gave official recognition to 380,000 informal businesses, thus bringing above board, from 1990 to 1994, some 500,000 jobs and $8 billion in tax revenue. These steps left Peru’s terrorists without a solid constituency in the cities....

"Looking back, what was crucial to this effort was our success in persuading U.S. leaders and policy makers, as well as key figures at the United Nations, to see Peru’s countryside differently: as a breeding ground not for Marxist revolution but for a new, modern capitalist economy. These new habits of mind helped us to beat back terror in Peru and can do the same, I believe, in the Middle East and North Africa."

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-capitalist-cure-for-terrorism-1412973796
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Mises Institute promotes free markets worldwide

Libertarian think tank promotes free markets worldwide from Auburn | Auburn Plainsman | Kyle Nazario:

September 29, 2010 - "The Mises Institute is located in a small, two-story building.... Only a small sign at the front advertises an institute is there at all.

"'We are sort of a school, we’re sort of a website, we’re sort of a library and a book repository and we’re sort of a think tank,' said Jeff Deist, president of the Institute. 'We have a pretty broad mission, but first and foremost we are about keeping the legacy and the current elements of the Austrian school of economics alive and healthy'....

"Professor of economics Henry Thompson said the Austrian school of economics is a way of thinking about the economy that focuses on historical and theoretical information rather than empirical data....

"Mark Thornton, senior fellow at the Mises Institute, ... said the Austrian school of economics has an unconventional way of thinking about economic issues.

"'We’re free market (economists), which is an alternative,' Thornton said. 'Some would say it’s a radical alternative.'

"Deist said Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises, the Mises Institute’s namesake, created a school of thought focusing on minimal government and private sector investment. The nationality of von Mises and Menger, both Austrian, became the collective banner for their theories.

"Work done by Mises scholars has drawn support from famous libertarians, such as Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano, both of whom, Deist said, have spoken at the Mises Institute....

"Thornton said educating the public, not influencing government policy, is the Mises Institute’s purpose.... Mises scholars educate people through publishing on the website, Mises.org, writing academic papers, and open seminars."

Read more: http://www.theplainsman.com/view/full_story/25829423/article-Libertarian-think-tank-promotes-free-markets-worldwide-from-Auburn?instance=home_news_1st_right
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EDvantage offers libertarian resources for schools

Koch-funded think tank offers schools course in libertarianism | Center for Public Integrity - Chris Young:

August 26, 2014 - "Pop quiz, teachers: Would you like to inject a strong dose of libertarianism into the curriculum you take back to school this fall?

"If you answered yes, then a Koch-funded think tank has exactly what you need. And it won’t cost you or your school a penny.

"The EDvantage, a project of the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies, bills itself as an online 'curriculum hub for pioneering educators.' The website offers high school teachers and college professors educational videos, articles and podcasts on topics including economics, history and philosophy....

According to its website, EDvantage is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, whose core funding areas include 'individual freedom and free markets.'

"Program director Daniel Green said through a foundation spokeswoman that the two-year, $739,000 grant is meant 'to further Sir John Templeton’s objective of supporting education about the enhancement of individual freedom and free markets.' In addition to funding free-market initiatives, the foundation — founded by the billionaire global investor and mutual fund pioneer — supports a variety of other causes, including ones related to science and religion.

"The Institute for Humane Studies, which is housed at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, is funded largely by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. The think tank, whose mission is to advance 'a freer society,' received $12.4 million from the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation from 2008 to 2012, according to annual tax documents."

Read more: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/26/15387/koch-funded-think-tank-offers-schools-course-libertarianism
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Youth Entrepreneurs brings market to high schools

Koch High: How The Koch Brothers Are Buying Their Way Into The Minds Of Public School Students - Christina Wilkie & Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post:

July 16, 2014 - "The official mission of Youth Entrepreneurs is to provide kids with 'business and entrepreneurial education and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society.' The underlying goal of the program, however, is to impart Koch's radical free-market ideology to teenagers.....

"Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course's message clear: The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.

"[T]he current structure of the program began to take shape in November 2009, documents show, when a team of associates at the Charles G. Koch Foundation launched an important project with Charles Koch's blessing: They would design and test what they called 'a high school free market and liberty-based course' with support from members of the Koch family's vast nonprofit and political network....

"Charles Koch founded Youth Entrepreneurs in 1991 with his wife, Elizabeth Koch, who serves as chairman of the group's board.... But the Kochs have renewed their focus on YE in recent years, pumping millions of dollars into it.... In 2007, YE reported assets of just over $450,000. In 2012, its assets topped $1.45 million.....

"During the 2012-2013 school year, YE's credit-bearing class reached more than 1,000 students in 29 schools in Kansas and Missouri, according to the group's annual report. Vernon Birmingham, YE's director of curriculum and teacher support, told HuffPost that the course will be in 42 schools in the coming school year. An offshoot in Atlanta, YE Georgia, reported being in 10 schools in the 2011-2012 school year. Since 2012, YE has also launched three major new initiatives: an online version of its course, an affiliate program to help rural schools access the class, and an after-school program, YE Academy, which served more than 500 students in its first year."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/koch-brothers-education_n_5587577.html
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Vice-Pope puts case against libertarianism

Can you be Catholic and libertarian? - The Washington Post - Melinda Henneberger:

June 6, 2014 - "For years, American Catholics have been under pressure to vote Republican.... Now, though, the red papal loafer may be on the other foot, with economic conservatives being called out.

"In Washington this week, the cardinal some consider the pontiff’s 'vice-pope' mocked them outright at a conference called Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case against Libertarianism. The Religion News Service story on the smackdown of trickle-down ran under the headline, 'Catholic and libertarian? Pope’s top adviser says they’re incompatible.'

"That adviser, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, was introduced by AFL-CIO president Richard L. Trumka, and preached against deregulation and 'worshipping idols, even if that idol is called "market economy".'  Rodríguez also called trickle-down economics a 'deception,' and said the 'invisible hand' of the market steals from and strangles the poor: 'We are no longer to trust the blind forces and the invisible hand of the market. This economy kills. This is what the pope is saying.'

"Some libertarians have described the pope’s economic views as naive and uninformed — and Rodríguez returned the favor. 'Many of these libertarianists do not read the social doctrine of the church, but now they are trembling before the book of Piketty,' he said, referring to French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-seller, “Capital in the Twenty-first Century, on the wealth disparities that have us headed into a new Gilded Age."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/can-you-be-catholic-and-libertarian/2014/06/06/92e602d4-ed00-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
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What's behind the new crusade against capitalism

Catholics Against Capitalism | National Review Online - Kevin Williamson:

June 10, 2014 - "The errors of the Catholic hierarchy regarding the economy are the product of errors in its thinking regarding the state. Catholic thinking about the role of the state has evolved precious little since 'render unto Caesar,' even though there is, especially in the Christian world, a blessed shortage of Caesars just now, and has been for some time. The Catholic clergy still operate under the Romans 13 assumption that 'the powers that be are ordained of God'.... From the old royalist Right to the redistributionist Left, there is an implicit and sometimes explicit belief that the state is a channel for moral expression, whether that expression takes the form of entrenching traditional ideals about family life or of collaborating with the state in the seizure and redistribution of wealth....

"This is true even among the so-called conservatives. Consider John Paul II writing on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum:

If Pope Leo XIII calls upon the State to remedy the condition of the poor in accordance with justice, he does so because of his timely awareness that the State has the duty of watching over the common good and of ensuring that every sector of social life, not excluding the economic one, contributes to achieving that good, while respecting the rightful autonomy of each sector....

"But the state in fact has no way of knowing to any practical effect what the common good even is or how its policies might affect priorities relating to it.... Meanwhile, he also expects the state to determine just wages and union work rules, to administer unemployment insurance, to calculate the economic consequences of immigration, and a hundred other things that the state has no capacity for doing. Like Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga and others, he assumes that the state will act in the cause of justice for the poor rather than being the most ruthless and pitiless exploiter of the poor, as history, including the history of this country, very strongly suggests that it will be....

"'The case against libertarianism'? As usual, the most important part of the question goes unstated and unanswered: 'Compared with what?'"

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379954/catholics-against-capitalism-kevin-d-williamson/page/0/1
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Thatcher an accidental libertarian heroine

Margaret Thatcher: An Accidental Libertarian Heroine » Spectator Blogs - Alex Massie:

April 10, 2013 - "Mrs Thatcher, of course, was a great economic liberal. Her approach to economics, guided by Smith, Hayek and Friedman, stressed the importance of individual endeavour. Remove the dead hand of state control and Britain could flourish again. The many individual invisible hands of the market would improve our collective lot....

"And she was right. As a Manchester Liberal, Thatcher appreciated the power and value of economic liberty. Slowly, if unevenly, the impact of an era of market forces and economic liberalisation have been felt across the globe. Millions, even billions, have benefited from the more efficient allocation of capital. In Asia, Latin America and even (to some extent) Africa, market forces and liberal economic policies have worked. If the journey is not yet complete, we still inhabit a world transformed....

"Mrs Thatcher was a social conservative. But one part of her legacy that is perhaps under-appreciated is the extent to which her triumph on the economic front contributed to her defeat in the social arena.... Margaret Thatcher’s economic libertarianism (if it can so be called) would eventually advance the cause of social libertarianism as well. That she would have disapproved of this matters little; it is part of her legacy too. And a welcome one."

Read more: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-an-accidental-libertarian-heroine/
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The actual libertarian movement didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — just the one inside Bill Maher’s head

No, The Actual Libertarian Movement Didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — It’s Just The One Inside Bill Maher’s Head | Mediaite - Andrew Kirell:

April 8, 2013 - "During his HBO show last Friday, Bill Maher dedicated four minutes to bashing libertarians for having 'ruined libertarianism.' The comedian lamented that even though he himself once identified as a libertarian, the movement has 'morphed into this creepy obsession with free-market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand [novel] called Atlas Shrugged.'

“I didn’t go nuts; this movement did,” he concluded before launching into a series of cartoonishly reductive descriptions of what he thinks are the ultimate libertarian ends.... But throughout all the libertarian bashing, ... he revealed that he really does not have a grasp on what the movement/ideology actually represents.....

"When Maher declared himself a 'libertarian' back in 2001, Salon declared it a 'joke,' noting that only a handful of his beliefs (specifically in the social issues realm) overlapped with libertarian ideology. His staunch support for the expansion of government over guns, education, business, etc., were all in direct opposition to what libertarians generally believe — and yet, somehow, he bizarrely believes to this day that the movement left him."

Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/no-the-actual-libertarian-movement-didnt-go-nuts-its-just-the-one-inside-bill-mahers-head/
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